The worker termite is about the size of a house-fly, the soldier much larger, with a flat head, enormously large in proportion to the size of his body, and long, curved jaws. These, and the thorax, are of a yellowish brown colour, and have a smooth, polished appearance, whereas the abdomen is a good deal lighter, and soft-looking. Only the soldiers fight. “They stand,” says Professor Drummond, “or promenade about, as sentries, at the mouths of the tunnels. When danger threatens, in shape of true ants, the soldier termite advances to the fight. With a few sweeps of its scythe-like jaws, it clears the ground, and whilst the attacking party is carrying off its dead, the builders, unconscious of the fray, quietly continue their work.” The latter, besides building the wonderful colossal nest, feeding the king and queen, and storing the eggs, as described, bring food to the nest, and feed and attend to the young, in all their stages. Besides the king and queen that have founded the termitary, other males and females are kept and attended to in it, by the workers, and these, should anything happen to the sovereigns, are ready to reign and lay eggs in their stead. White ants are enormously destructive, and a great pest to civilised man, wherever the two come in contact. Their food is, for the most part, vegetable, but they are ready to destroy, if not to eat, almost anything. Their habit is to bore into any solid substance, and eat out its interior, leaving it hollow, with its outer surface, represented by a thin shell, intact. Such an object may be a chair, perhaps, or a table that was once, and still continues to look, of massive build. Now, however, should it be sat upon, or laid as usual, it collapses as though made of tinder. White ants have established themselves, to some extent, in Southern Europe, even in Southern France, where they have done great mischief. The navy-yard in Rochefort was, in part, destroyed by them, and their ravages at the Prefecture of La Rochelle have been minutely described by M. de Quatrefages. They extended even to the archives. “One day it was discovered that the archives of the Department were almost totally destroyed, and that without the slightest external trace of any damage. The termites had reached the boxes in which these documents were preserved, by mining the wainscoting; and they had then leisurely set to work to devour these administrative records, carefully respecting the upper sheets and the margin of each leaf, so that a box which was only a mass of rubbish, seemed to contain a pile of papers in perfect order.” I do not know if a similar misfortune has ever occurred at any of the French schools. A sudden discovery that all the class-books were in the condition described must have caused great lamentations amongst _les élèves_.[8]